


Wouldn't It Be Nice

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Give Me The News [7]
Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: (or at least a pattern of crushes), Episode Related, Gen, Victor Ehrlich: Disaster Bi, Victor/Roberta discussed, fear of homophobia but no incidences thereof, one incredibly naive boy, to all the boys he's loved before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 13:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17081411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Pre- rather than post- episode-- set before Victor starts asking various people's advice about proposing. He's got a few reasons for rushing into marriage... some of them are worse than others.





	Wouldn't It Be Nice

    “I’m thinking I should marry that girl.” Victor says, and he waits for the storm to pass. It hasn’t been that long, he knows, he knows, but he doesn’t think Wayne’s got a whole lot of room to talk about diving into things. He should get an opinion from someone… someone who’s good at this. Someone with experience, and not the kind of experience Wayne has. But Wayne’s his best friend, he’s got to talk to him about it just to talk to him about it.

 

    “You’re really sure she’s the one?”

 

    “Yes! Well-- Yes!”

 

    “Well?”

 

    He sighs. “Well-- I mean it’s complicated right now, for a lot of reasons. And see-- I have this friend.”

 

    “Is the friend you?”

 

    “No! I mean it, I have this friend. I mean, that’s the problem! I mean… I’ve got a good thing going with Roberta. She really seems to like me, and… I mean, that’s important for a marriage, right? And-- And the thing with this friend is…”

 

    “This friend doesn’t think you should marry a girl you barely know?”

 

    “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. I mean, my friend’s single, um, my friend…”

 

    “Wait, is this a friend of the female persuasion?” Wayne perks up-- well of course he does.

 

    _Broad, strong hands, stubbled jaw, the light of that smile, just an accidental meeting, just one of those things, and you told yourself you never thought of him like that before, but come on, Victor, you always notice a nice pair of hands, doesn’t matter who they’re attached to… you always notice._

 

    “Not that kind of friend.” He says quickly. Is it better or worst to say yes? If he says yes, then it’s about attraction, and that’s not the point of his story, he just doesn’t remember the point of his story, he remembers _do you want to just get a table together, you’re here alone and I’m here alone and well can I buy you a drink let me buy you a drink how are you doing no how are you, the laugh, low and throaty, the funny-seeing-you-here, gonna be back on the west coast soon so it’s good we caught up, it’s so good we caught each other tonight, I’m so glad I caught you tonight, and a smile you haven’t seen in what feels like forever, and everything’s just been so tense and so lonely lately no time for anything barely any time for Roberta and when there is she cites Weiss and you can hardly even talk and it wouldn’t be so bad to kiss a while and call it quits it wouldn’t be the best it never is when it goes that way, but it wouldn’t be the worst, except she shuts down and there’s no nothing and it all feels so wrong when it happens and you can’t even_ talk _about it_ that he was going to mention a friend, and if he says that friend is female then it becomes about how he wants to bag her and if he says no then he’d just better not slip up and start talking like _you wanted him to kiss you when he gave you a lift home said you were on the way and you know you’re a little out of it actually but you have too few friends as it is and you’d wanted to spend the time together and if you’d told him you wanted him to kiss you you’d be short one friend today_ he’s interested in him like that. Which he isn’t, so it should be easy.

   

    If he was married, if he was married, this wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t turn and see a familiar face in a new light and wonder, he wouldn’t lose his mind just because a man smiled at him a little too sweetly. He wouldn’t wonder about the softness of someone else’s lips and he definitely wouldn’t think about a hand warm on his shoulder in passing, when it’s only the logistics of navigating an over-crowded hallway.

 

    He’s always kind of known. From before he was even interested in romance or anything, he’s always been aware that sex didn’t make much of a difference to him. That he could feel just as much for a boy as for a girl. But he’d been aware that he wasn’t supposed to feel those things for other boys. He’d pushed the thought aside early on.

 

    The first time he couldn’t ignore it, he’d been fourteen. Enamored with an older boy, golden curls and golden tan, a teenage beach bum. It was the kind of crush you could pass off as merely the worship of Cool, admiration for a guy that girls all liked, who was good at the things you wanted to be good at and old enough to drive his old man’s car, and who spoke with a certain worldly air about going into The City to score. And at fourteen, Victor Ehrlich couldn’t have told you what ‘scoring’ meant if his life depended on it. There was the vague notion that if it wasn’t about sex, it was about drugs, but it was all rather mystical back then, the adult world that older teens inhabited, one you couldn’t fully step into, though at fourteen you were too old to be dismissed out of hand as a child.

 

    He’d been beautiful then, or Victor at fourteen had thought so, and he didn’t know him, could only privately, mentally call him ‘beach boy’. They’d spoken once or twice over the course of a summer, that had been all, but… it marked a turning point. For a little while after that, despite his best efforts, he’d been boy crazy.

 

    College came, girls were back at the forefront of his imagination by then. Med school, and he was going to be a surgeon, he couldn’t afford not to be interested in women, women alone. Lucky for him, women have a lot to recommend them by, and Roberta, gosh, well… her more than most. From the moment they’d met, she’d had a way about her, and she made him feel like he could really breathe, like he could be himself with her. Well, at first, and if he married her it could be that way again! He just needs to not overthink this the way he’s overthought everything else.

 

    “I just mean, my friend, like I said, my friend’s single, and… like, opposed to not being single.”

 

    “Ah, okay, I gotcha.” Wayne says, and he probably doesn’t, but it’s nice to hear anyway. “So this guy’s telling you not to give up the wild bachelor lifestyle for one girl, is that it?”

 

    “I didn’t ask. I wasn’t going to talk to someone else about it before you. And I mean… I figure I should get some opinions from, I dunno. From the right people. It’s just… I was having dinner with this friend, and this friend just… hell. I don’t see wedding bells in his future, that’s all.”

 

    “Wait-- is this friend a player or are we talking, like, a _confirmed bachelor_?”

 

    Victor’s skin crawls. “No. Just a regular-- Just regular, just he’s not going to get married. It’s not like that.”

 

    “I’m not judging, I mean it takes all kinds. If you’ve got a friend who’s a confirmed bachelor that’s got nothing to do with you. I’m just trying to figure out what the story is here.”

 

    “I’m just saying… I didn’t bring it up. I wanted to bring it up with you first. And it’s just… He just made me a little nervous about marriage, but he wouldn’t have on purpose if he knew I was thinking about proposing, it’s just-- He just made me a little nervous about it.”

 

    “Well you should be a little nervous about it. You’ve gotta slow down, you hardly know this girl.”

 

    “I know I love her.” _But you can name three or four guys who could take you to bed if they picked the right time to ask_. _If you didn’t have a girl._

 

    It would have been naive to imagine he wouldn’t feel the pendulum swing back again. He was always going to like men. It’s not even that it’s something he wants to ‘fix’ about himself! It doesn’t hurt if he’s had a few crushes on guys. Hell, all it took back in high school was longish hair and a nice smile, and long hair was in fashion then… It’s only a problem if he’s tempted to act on it and he’s not _unless someone touches your arm and smiles too sweet and then you wonder what it would be like_ tempted to act on it.

 

    He hasn’t been tempted to kiss a guy since high school, it’s been all girls since then _except that one time you thought about kissing Phil…_ Phil didn’t count, though, Phil is just so handsome and it was the first time they’d done something as friends, as real friends, and it was just an idle question of what it would be like, not a deep, personal longing. _Or that one time with Samuels_ no, no, Samuels was a fluke, he was just being so nice that day and Victor had really needed it, but he’d never thought of him as being especially attractive before or since, outside of his being a surgeon and that being an attractive quality, but that was the only thing, or the only two things, he never had a crush on the guy. _Doctor Caldwell_ does not count, he’s _maybe_ almost as good looking as Phil and he’s charming to everybody, anyone would think about it once or twice, that’s not the same as being _tempted_ , that’s just being human. And having a lot of lonely time on your hands.

 

    Not that he’d ever thought about him when he was… having lonely time on his hands.

 

    _But you did think about_ no, okay, guys, sometimes, the vague idea of a guy, okay, okay, he’s been tempted to kiss another man, to see what it might be like, he’d been tempted a couple of times in college and med school. Back when he’d ride the overnight train on a Friday night, sleep as much of the nine hours down the coast as he could and wake up in Malibu, and the surf was perfect and the boys were perfect, toned and sun-kissed, hair breeze-tossed or plastered down dripping with water, bright grins and laughter as they sat in the sand talking about the perfect wave, and he’d notice, yes, a guy’s hands while he waxed down his board, but if one of them pointed out a girl in a bikini, he was drooling just as hard as any other guy so it was fine, no one noticed if he was funny a little, and it was…

 

    It was so good, because they all loved this one thing, he wasn’t the only guy who spent nine and a half hours in transit to get to this beach to these waves, it was good, because they were strangers who didn’t feel like strangers, they didn’t make Victor feel like a stranger, and everyone but his aunt makes Victor feel like a stranger sometimes. Well… a couple people less than others. Wayne doesn’t much. Jack doesn’t much. Doesn’t really ever, and Wayne, they’re best friends and it’s okay if sometimes there’s moments where they’re strange to each other, because short of letting the man back into his apartment for an extended stay, there’s nothing Victor wouldn’t do for him, really there’s not. And Vijay, him, too. Vijay could have gotten mad that time Victor kind of accidentally maybe insulted him a little when he’d compared his chutney to soap, even though he’d kind of in a way also meant it as a good thing, sort of, but he’d just said some people taste coriander that way and some people don’t and he’d let Victor say he didn’t mean it wasn’t good because it still was, and he didn’t make him feel strange about that at all and he really would have had every right to.

 

    “Look, I know what it’s like to wanna jump the gun.” Wayne says. “And I’m not saying you don’t have real feelings for this girl. I’m just saying slow down and think about it.

 

    “I am thinking about it.” He whines, just a little. He can’t explain that he needs this. That he’d _almost leaned in and planted one on a guy and that guy would not have appreciated it and you wouldn’t be friends anymore and he might have slugged you for it because some people do, some people are like that, and you might want to think none of your friends are, but you can’t know that, and what if he told his other friends and what if one of them you know one of them might have, or if work found out and you lost your job just for kissing one guy_ thought if he was married he wouldn’t have those thoughts anymore, about anyone. Men or women! He’s a one-woman man, after all!

 

    That might be a little bit of a sore subject still, actually, though at least Wayne and Shirley seem to be okay friends again after… well, the passage of time and all.

 

    He just wants to be married _and then we’d be happy and then we’d be happy_ so that he can put everyone else out of his head. Forever. It’ll be just the two of them, him and Roberta, and it’s okay if things are… he doesn’t know, however they’ll be, as long as they’re together. They’ll have a couple kids, once he has the money and they have a nicer place. He can’t wait. Really.

 

    He can’t kiss a man _but it seems fun_ and he loves her, really. She’s the sweetest, loveliest girl, a girl who likes him, he keeps the little plush piggy family she’d given him next to his pillow and he doesn’t even feel weird about being a grown man with a stuffed animal or… well, several he guesses? A few in one? But he doesn’t think that’s weird if the most wonderful girl in the world gave it to you. And sometimes the signals are a little mixed, but maybe that just means she wants to and thinks she shouldn’t and he wishes she thought she could but the thing is… well, he doesn’t really know what the thing is.

 

    The thing is, he could be happy with her! And it would stop the rest of this ridiculous nonsense. They wouldn’t have to deal with shouldn’t, it would be the two of them, they’d be _married and then we’d be happy and then we’d be_ happy.

 

    And he’d never have to worry about wanting anyone else ever again.

 

    Right?


End file.
